Posted on 07/22/2015 6:35:10 PM PDT by Whenifhow
While focusing their resources and political energy on the NSA’s mass collection of metadata, privacy advocates have neglected the most dangerous institutionalized violations of the Fourth Amendment: administrative subpoenas.
Now a United States District Court judge in Texas has ruled for the Drug Enforcement Agency that an administrative subpoena may be used to search medical records. It was inevitable, given the march towards illegally nullifying the Fourth Amendment through use of these judge-less bureaucrat warrants authorized by Congress.
Administrative subpoenas are issued unilaterally by government agencies -- meaning without approval by neutral judges -- and without probable cause stated under oath and affirmation as required by the Fourth Amendment. There are now 336 federal statutes authorizing administrative subpoenas, according to the Department of Justice.
In U.S. v Zadeh, the DEA obtained the records of 35 patient files without showing probable cause or obtaining a warrant issued by a judge. Citing New Deal-era case law, Judge Reed O’Connor noted that “[t]he Supreme Court has refused to require that [a federal] agency have probable cause to justify issuance of an administrative subpoena,” and that they may be issued “merely on suspicion that the law is being violated, or even just because it wants assurance that it is not." (Emphasis added).
In other words, the government may now use “fishing expeditions” for medical records.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Feds Get the Power to Seize Medical Records on 'Fishing Expedition' Investigations with No Subpoena from a Judge
Nut-job Conspiracy Theory Ping!
To get onto The Nut-job Conspiracy Theory Ping List you must threaten to report me to the Mods if I don't add you to the list...
Tyranny...
From the article:
A 1946 Supreme Court opinion used in the Zadeh case to justify warrantless searches of medical records received a scathing and prescient dissent by liberal Justice Frank Murphy. Murphy wrote:
To allow a nonjudicial officer, unarmed with judicial process, to demand the books and papers of an individual is an open invitation to abuse of that power. It is no answer that the individual may refuse to produce the material demanded. Many persons have yielded solely because of the air of authority with which the demand is made, a demand that cannot be enforced without subsequent judicial aid. Many invasions of private rights thus occur without the restraining hand of the judiciary ever intervening.
Only by confining the subpoena power exclusively to the judiciary can there be any insurance against this corrosion of liberty. Statutory enforcement would not thereby be made impossible. Indeed, it would be made easier. A people’s desire to cooperate with the enforcement of a statute is in direct proportion to the respect for individual rights shown in the enforcement process.
Quoting the Declaration of Independence, Justice Murphy noted how such methods of searches were so contrary to liberty and law that they previously contributed to “successful revolt.”
HIPAA, the one part of HillaryCare that was passed, claims to be to protect medical privacy, but in reality lets the government have whatever it wants.
LOL. Love the dogs. Kinda says it all.
This needs to be fixed. Restraints on government power apply to all government entities, not just to police. I’m generally not a fan of civil rights lawsuits, but I’d give the victims of this thuggish action hundreds of millions of dollars each - so much that it would deter future violations of the 4th Amendment.
So how many Freepers still support the War on Drugs?
No. You give the perpetrators 10 to 20 years and this BS would stop.
Had ENOUGH Yet ?
How about both, so the thugs and their leaders all think twice before denying Americans their rights under color of law? The charge:
18 U.S. Code § 242 - Deprivation of rights under color of law
“Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States . . . shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.”
This carries the death penalty as one option, so there is no statute of limitations. Even if Obama is too much of a petty tyrant to prosecute now, we need to remind administrative law judges and other thugs that, like the Nazis who committed the same crime, they will never be safe from justice.
“So how many Freepers still support the War on Drugs?”
If it means being greeted by dogs like that upon returning to the country, count me as a PROHIBITIONIST.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another . . . deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it . . .
Restraints on government power will always exist. They are reaching (or have reached) the point where a higher level restraint is the only option for restraining that inevitable and long train of abuses and usurpations that leftists cannot resits.
As soon as I posted that I knew someone would remind me of the ultimate restraint.
What I should have said is there is no government restraint on government, there is no law they can't break with impunity, there is no Constitutional authority that they can't deny exists.
There is no protection from sedition charges, when laws are only selectively enforced.
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